Pianist Barry Harris soft-pedals his musings at Jazz Showcase

Even jazz devotees sometimes forget how much Detroit has given to the music.

From Betty Carter and Milt Jackson to Tommy Flanagan and the brothers Thad, Elvin and Hank Jones, Detroit has meant more than just Motown (though that obviously would have been plenty).

That regal lineage came to mind Thursday evening when one of the more enduring figures of Detroit's postwar period swung into Chicago at the Jazz Showcase. And though pianist Barry Harris long since has moved to New York -- as did most of Detroit's '50s- and '60s-era jazz stars -- he still conveys an earthy sense of swing distinctly identified with the urban Midwest.

You could hear as much in the uptempo tunes he played, opening the winter season at the Showcase. Once Harris started chugging forward in standards such as "All God's Chillun Got Rhythm" and "On Green Dolphin Street," he effectively recalled the straight-ahead, no-pretense musical attitude of his hometown. His soul-tinged harmonies and easy, breezy phrasing articulated a language spoken fluently not only in Detroit but also in Chicago, St. Louis and other nearby centers of African-American musical culture.

Yet on this occasion ,there was a muted, melancholy side to Harris' playing as well, a lion-in-winter quality that may not be surprising in the work of other 75-year-old pianists but proved less anticipated in Harris' case. For the pianist who, in the past, threw off great flashes of speed and energy in his right hand often soft-pedaled his thoughts this time around.

In every ballad of the evening's first set, for instance, Harris opened with a soft, Impressionistic reverie, drifting into one key and out another, quoting snippets of tunes without so much as hinting at a beat or an underlying structure. Once the song was fully under way, he produced hauntingly spare pianism, saying more with brief shards of melody than many pianists can with whole handfuls of notes.

Harris turned in some of the most tender playing of the night in the venerable "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square." Rather than state the tune outright, he played an ingenious countermelody that elegantly dovetailed around the original. The long and arching phrases and the expressive dissonances and resolutions that followed showed just how profound a builder of chords Harris can be. Moreover, in his piquant reharmonizations, Harris evoked the work of another great Midwestern pianist who also migrated east long ago -- the vastly underrecognized Chris Anderson.

Virtually every piece that Harris played during his first set conveyed at least a few ravishing moments, from his rhapsodic introduction to "On Green Dolphin Street" to his delicately arpeggiated chords on "I Can't Get Started" to his choralelike passages in "All God's Chillun Got Rhythm."

Yet it's worth stressing that this is a more introspective Harris than listeners may be accustomed to hearing and, as such, may be an acquired taste. With bassist Eddie de Haas and drummer Leon Joyce playing softly behind Harris, this trio whispers far more than it roars.